The Wonkiest NBA Preview

Everything an AU Wonk needs to know for the 2018 season

 By Lucas Trevor

Before I discuss my love for Kristaps Porzingis and his usefulness in solving Russia’s encroachment into the former Eastern Bloc, I would like to explain the title of this article. I hate the word Wonk. I hate it with my entire soul. With every fiber of my being I hate that word. When I see it on the side of a shuttle, I shed a single tear. A single angry tear. A single tear of red hot fury.

To be perfectly honest, I only used it so you would click on this article. This is clickbait and I would suggest you stop reading now. The Rival is trying to expand their sports section and you horrible people refuse to click on a link that is just called an NBA preview. The result? We have to put Wonk in the title and make it look funny. We can’t just publish the news anymore.

We can’t just write something normal and have you read it. Instead we have to make some basic jokes about how the NBA is like International Relations, and Lebron James is Justin Trudeau or whatever. News flash -- Michael Jordan is not the the Henry Kissinger of basketball. Henry Kissinger is a war criminal and Michael Jordan is a shooting guard. No, the current Cleveland Cavaliers are not a representation of a developing nation in Latin America after a US backed coup, they are just a sub 30 win team, and that’s it.

Why are we like this? What primal desire does this fulfill? Comparing the world's richest and most talented athletes to policy makers we do not know and will likely never meet?

We raise our leaders to the highest of pedestals just so that in the moment that they are needed they will no doubt fail us. We need those we look up to to be like those around us. We need our heroes to be like us so that when they succeed we believe we can, and when they fail we feel their pain too. But to what end?

We march on. The Rival staff writes their articles unable to make a dent in all of human history. And you click, because of course you do. We put in our clichés and our jokes. We write our stories as we procrastinate our homework and what for? To help you procrastinate? So that you laugh? Or at least exhale sharply out your nose if you’re alone? Do we brighten your tiny little corner of humanity? Does The Rival staff actually succeed in making your day a little more bearable, a little less mundane, a little closer to enjoyable? We do these things until the human race either kills itself, or survives long enough to witness the inevitable heat death of our universe.

Either way humanity goes, what we do will not matter. In the longest of time tables our actions are pointless, and our choices without consequence. So what is the point of this article? This NBA season? This American University? What is the point of any of it?

Carl Sagan spoke of the pale blue dot we call Earth with hope, wonder and joy. He said that all we do is confined to this tiny mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. Sagan argued that Earth is our only home, and what we do on it matters. That despite its near insignificance our sworn duty is to protect our tiny little dot. But what if we truly are alone? What if we are the only people in a totally empty forest? Could it be that we are sailing forward towards a shoreline that will never appear? Because no matter what we do, it will be forgotten. We truly are just tears in the rain, just a song that will never be heard. The fact is, all that we do will be lost to time, and inevitability and death.

Warriors in 5.